Mavis Bates was seeing green when she threw her hat into the primary ring for the Kane County Board’s 2020 election. And after winning the District 4 seat, she eagerly took her “passion” for the environment into this public role.
So it seems only fitting that on Feb. 19 the Naperville-based Conservation Foundation is presenting Bates with the Thomas Weisner Memorial Award, named after Aurora’s late mayor who put the environment near the top of his own to-do list as an elected official.
Conservation Foundation President and CEO Brook McDonald described Bates as someone who’s “practiced environmental advocacy her whole life” and has “taken that knowledge, spirit and passion and put it into play” by shaping local policy.
Past winners of the award include Dundee Township Supervisor Susan Harney for her work on open space preservation and conservation and John Hoscheit, longtime Kane County Forest Preserve District president, who during his tenure increased the district’s open space from 7,000 to 20,000 acres through voter-approved referendum questions.
“It’s one thing to stand on one side of the podium and advocate for the local environment and another to stand on the elected side,” McDonald told me. “I’d like to see more of that.”
So would Bates.
Sustainability and climate change have been important issues to this 77-year-old former educator and software designer for as long as she can remember. Among her memories is being in charge of the 10 educational booths at the county’s first Earth Day event at Fabyan Forest Preserve in 1990.
“It was pretty basic,” Bates recalled of those show-and-tell displays, which included a wooden clothes rack where kids could hang wet socks to give them an idea of how to save energy and a table that used a red gasoline container, bushel of field corn and a pound of hamburger to illustrate our everyday environmental impact.
Other, more sophisticated Bates-led initiatives soon followed: She helped organize the Aurora Solid Waste Advisory Committee to educate residents on how to save money by recycling. And, as a member of the independent citizens group called Aurora Green Lights, she founded the city’s first GreenFest in 2010, with the goal of “spreading the idea of sustainability throughout the Fox Valley.”
Two years later and with what she described as “gentle nagging” on her part, Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner created the city’s Sustainability Advisory Board. And in 2013, Bates became chair of the Sierra Club Valley of the Fox group that focuses on programs, outings, lobbying and political activism.
But Bates, who was an acupuncturist and worked in computer programming and marketing at Bell Labs for 20 years, long had her sights on a political office. After losing in an Aurora aldermanic election in 2012, Bates was elected to the Fox Valley Park District Board in 2018, but bided her time until a position on the Kane County Board “seemed to have my name on it,” she told me.
Elected in 2020 with “strong Democratic values,” including that green vision, Bates jumped at the chance to chair the board’s Energy and Environmental Committee. Among her proudest accomplishments is the installation of an eight-acre solar panel field behind the old Kane County Sheriff’s Office that she says will save taxpayers up to $6 million over the next 25 years.
Bates insists she’s feeling better than ever about what’s going on locally. Not only is GreenFest coming back after a year hiatus – it will be held May 2 in the former Sci-Tech Building on Benton Street in downtown Aurora – the city’s sustainability board is making real progress, in large part, she added, thanks to the support of Aurora’s progressive Mayor John Laesch, who after he was elected last April appointed both a sustainability director and coordinator.
“We’ve gone from zero people to two full-time people so we have more support, more visibility,” she said.
And that’s critical, Bates added, pointing to a recent survey of the top 20 things Americans care about that lists climate change as number 19 and the economy at the top.
While those solar panels may not “be as visible” as other conservation work, Bates is convinced those savings will resonate with people who are worried about their financial survival.
“We need to make sure people keep climate change front in their minds,” she said.
While the current federal administration has taken a different stance, McDonald, who’s been an environmental leader for over 40 years in the Chicago area, reminded me that “conservation is local” and has “historically done well” in the Chicago area.
Consider the fact DuPage County had the first storm water management program in the country and that referendum questions for open space “have not failed to pass in the last 25 years,” he said.
“We have a well-educated voter base,” McDonald insisted. “People understand how open spaces and clean air and water add to our quality of life.”
Bates has certainly done her part in bringing awareness to the Fox Valley.
“Mavis is an amazing positive force in our community … her work is so crucially important now as we see increasing extreme weather events, melting glaciers and water shortages related to our changing natural environment,” said Marilyn Weisner, when asked about the recipient of her late husband’s memorial award. “She has been calmly and persistently addressing the problem from all angles for many years,” doing so “without expecting any accolades.”
Which is why this recognition was so appreciated by Bates, but also unexpected.
“It’s exciting,” she said. “It’s what I was born to do.”
dcrosby@tribpub.com
